Russian frankness mentioned in Subtle Art of Not Giving..

I read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k by Mark Manson in early 2018, and loved it. Never have I laughed out loud with so much relief (because it's SO true, right?!) since.. since John Taylor Gatto's "Dumbing us Down".

A few pages on Mark's experience in Russia were so revealing about more than one thing. I'd taken snaps of them.. just came across them again in an old folder. I didn't want to post them online at the time as the book was new and still in stands and I didn't want to "spoiler" it. Well, by now it's canon and he has another book out. Let's share those pages.

What this hit up for me : For the longest time I've had a major mis-match with the world around me : Their propensity of getting offended by simple but blunt truths. (Actually, the getting offended part is ok - it's the not moving ahead from there that confounds me. Like, when the hell are you going to take the next step and check out whether it's actually true or not? Does that not even matter to you??)

And while during the time I was being given this whole bucket load of "ways" to speak "nonviolently" and it was just not working out for me, this was a freaking relief! I wasn't a horrible person - I was merely... Russian! Not just that, there's a clear case here of liberty and freedom needing frankness.

I had already been admiring Inessa's videos (subtitlings) of conversations in Russia on politics and all, precisely for their refreshing frankness. And this bolstered all of that.

How would woke activists treat F.R.I.E.N.D.S ?

Were the super-hit F.R.I.E.N.D.S sitcom (which is probably the most repeatedly-aired show in several Mid-East channels for some reason - surf through Arabic cable channels and you'll likely see it running in at least two) to air in today's times,

Which of these would have greater odds that today's super-woke crowd would object to it, and get the show cancelled or incontrovertibly mutilated to make it politically correct and completely unfunny?

1. Joey's attitudes towards women, and Monica, Rachel and Phoebe's acceptance and non-objection to the same.

2. Rachel's portrayal of fashionable but dumb city girls

3. Fat-shaming of Monica's past

I don't have any objection to any of these - I love the Friends sitcom precisely for its imperfectness. But measure it by today's supposed standards and you might scratch at the surface of why people are getting sick and tired of the SJWs / woke crowd.

Cutlure wars : what the two sides are saying

One side says:

I am speaking out at considerable risk to my reputation, career and possibly my freedom, because i am concerned about so and so thing happening, because it violates so and so principles that I hold dear, without which life would not be worth living. I uphold the other side's right to believe and speak what they believe in, but their so and so actions or support for them are running afoul of so and so basic principles, and are violating these and these rights of mine and other people that I care for, which is not fair.

The other side says:

I hate that other side. There is no way we can negotiate or compromise. They are evil. I don't want to "live and let live" - I want to exterminate their existence. I forbid you or anybody from listening from them - forget about obeying; if you even so much as hear their speech, you yourself might become evil like some contagion. I am not interested in any dialogue or any debate, and I will go out of my way to prevent anybody from listening to what the other side has to say, because I've already decided that they're evil, only I know what is right, and there is nothing that can possibly change my mind.

Which of these sides seems less dangerous to you?

Why are you being ordered to bow down to the one that sounds more dangerous?

Banning your opponent from defending themselves

First question that comes to mind:

Is there a matching gag order on everyone who hates this guy?

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-one-insane-gag-order-20190930-kp7umv2grrhzxi7kcqmdn23zdq-story.html

If everyone who hates him is allowed to go to town attacking him, while he and everyone in his camp are banned from saying one word in defense of him,

Then how the bloody hell do you have any kind of fair system?

The hypocrisy of people calling themselves "liberals" speaks volumes in this case. They can't survive a fair dialogue / debate, so they cheat, restrict their opponents from speaking out against their lies, and tip the scales in their favor.

Here's another similar case going on, this one enforced by Facebook instead of the courts:

WATCH: Facebook Admits To Censoring Users Who Post Pro-Tommy Robinson Messages

https://lauraloomer.us/2019/09/29/watch-facebook-admits-to-censoring-users-who-post-pro-tommy-robinson-messages/

To justify system change, we need...

"To fight climate change, we need system change"

How about turning that around.

"To justify system change, we need climate change"

Or, more accurately, we need a bogey / huge fear.

In normal circumstances your proposed radical changes will not be entertained, because they don't hold up to rational inspection; their track record is bad; they've butchered too many millions of people; they've delivered the exact opposite of what they promised (said everybody will be prosperous; ensured everyone stays impoverished).

So you need an emergency to push your agenda through.

It's all huny dory while the emergency is real.

But when it emerges to not be all it was hyped up to be, then your loyalty to your agenda overpowers your obligation to reality.

And you start down the slippery road of propaganda : of nonstop fear-mongering, of demonizing everyone who wants to rationally think about what you're advocating, who asks pesky questions. Anyone who dares to question you is to be branded away as evil. Because your cause is more important than reality.

There's another term for this. "Crisis capitalism". Ironic that it's the Left capitalizing on it.

Dialogue vs Emergency

Q: Can dialogue be possible when you're in emergency mode?

A: No.

Q: What is the need of the hour?

A: Dialogue

Q: And what are you pushing for?

A: Emergency

reference: See "Climate Emergency", "global climate strike" etc,

Then check out: "Mann hockey stick lawsuit penn state"

Or, link: 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/michael_mann_creator_of_the_infamous_global_warming_hockey_stick_loses_lawsuit_against_climate_skeptic_ordered_to_pay_defendants_costs.html

Declare Israel as a part of the Anglo-American commonwealth

Here's a random idea.

In light of the recently revealed history of the place being the bithplace of Judeo-Christian culture and a place that was violently invaded by Islamic conquest because it was the birthplace of Judeo-Christian culture which they wanted to conquer as part of their "Islam must take over the world" expansionist worldviews and not for any actual religious origins (nope... Islam's origin points are Mecca-Medina),

Declare Israel - particularly Jerusalem - a part of the Anglo-American commonwealth.

It already is in practice - let's just formalize it.

Just like Saudi Arabia's rulers declare themselves as "Custodian of the two Holy Mosques", let's have the United States of America declare itself as the Custodian of Jerusalem.

It'll at least make people look into history earlier than just the end of WW2, where I can now understand that in the ashes and chaos the Judeo-Christian world saw a window of opportunity to take back what was most important to them - with all the other holy places already conquered and desecrated by an ideology that had declared their destruction as its goal within its core texts itself, long before Hitler's time.

Ref video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wugWj42pLI
Why We Are Afraid, A 1400 Year Secret, by Dr Bill Warner -Political Islam, 2013-06-02

Civlisedness check from Chris Cuomo's "Fredo" freakout

What everyone on the Conservative side is re-asserting : Don't bother people when they're out in public with their families - that's not a nice thing. What everyone on the Liberals/Democrats side has been asserting since that Maxine Waters speech : Get in people's faces, confront them when they're out in public with their families; don't allow them to be in peace. 

Since then there have been several incidents of enraged libs attacking and chasing away public figures from public places, restaurants etc. 

But how do the Conservatives respond? They explicitly instruct their side to NOT harass public figures from the other side of the divide in public - because that's not nice. 

That tells me everything I want to know about these two battling sides.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzs58Dc4XD8
'The Five' reacts to CNN anchor Chris Cuomo's viral dispute -Fox News, 2019-08-13

Wassup my N

6:00 - I find it comical that the n-word is considered as anything like the n-word. I was in high school till 2003 - an Indian school - and our common greeting to each other was "Whassup my n....! " and it conveyed brotherhood and camaraderie. We had picked it up from American movies and media at the time. Our faces were a heterogenous mix of all shades from fair-skinned Indian to nearly black-skinned Indian. And the n-word was used by all and for all.
So why, in a span of 15 years the same word suddenly became the practiced equivalent of Voldemort (That which shall not be named!) is beyond me. If you allow this, then how many more such common-parlance words are you going to keep making unacceptable? 

When will you stop?

Posted this as a comment on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Meyw_bWwmGQ
Viral Chris Cuomo Fredo Outburst, Priyanka Chopra Backlash, Barstool Sports Union & Kashmir -Philip DeFranco, 2019-08-13

Of Hijabs and anti-manspreading chairs

Middle East: Man finds himself getting sexually aroused just by looking at women's normal hair while they're going about their everyday business. Decides that's immoral, blames it on the women and decrees they must all fully cover their heads in hijab from now on.

West: Woman finds herself getting sexually aroused just by looking at men sitting while going about their everyday business. Decides that's immoral, blames it on the men and decrees they must all squish their legs together from now on.

The anti-manspreading chair is the Hijab for men. Take that, bigots.

Meanwhile the obvious solution escapes both sides : It's part of life to get randomly sexually aroused. Growing up means learning how to control it, being responsible and not blaming your problems on others.

Inspired from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWFcHqvl81A

Man Tries Sitting In Anti-Manspreading Chair, Immediately Crushes His Balls -Timcast, 2019-07-26

Addendum : 

Year 2120 : Men squishing their legs together is a religious thing; it's a symbol of their devotion to God; there's nothing oppressive about it, you hateful racist bigot!

Men not squishing their legs together : well, they're asking for it! #sarcasm

Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals

Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.

Sooo much more than religion being the opium of the masses.

The genocides of the 20th century - the worst in recorded history - all committed by people who said "oh look, no religion hence we're all so much more rational now!".

The fact that everywhere they rejected God at a country level they've ended up propping a fallible human it its place.

The fact that religious people have figured out the problems with big government, forced welfare, censorship etc etc so much earlier than these intellectuals did.

It's a paradox, like chasing the butterfly. The difference between wisdom and intelligence - and how wisdom evades those who pursue it. 

The faithful can achieve independence because they've met their dependence quota virtually. The "rational" end up being slaves because they didn't count on having that quota at all and it snuck up on them from behind.

They were projecting their own shit onto others this entire time. Damn.

Tommy Robinson meets Julian Assange

From Tommy Robinson channel on Telegram:

Tommy wants to thank everyone for his letters and those campaigning for him outside.  23 hours in his cell and zero human contact can really affect your mental health but the thought of Free Tommy stickers and banners across the country triggering the elites is making him smile.  In the first 1.5 weeks he had no contact with any other person.  Last night another prisoner was moved to the cell above his.  That was Julian Assange.  They had a long talk out of the Window.  I would imagine they could swap quite unbelievable stories of state persecution.  #FreeTommy #CorruptBritain #politicalprisoner

UK : Frivolous cases by the Left to bleed dissenters dry

Yeh court cases free mein nahin hotey. Frivolous cases, like an accusation of causing anxiety to convicted pedophiles by standing and filming outside the courthouse (by the way, Guardian and BBC journalists along with a hyper violent milkshaking Antifa are going to be standing outside the courthouse on 4 July, filming Tommy as he goes in for this ridiculous trial and attacking his supporSo are we saying that it's ok to cause anxiety to under-trial people but if you cause anxiety to a convicted pedophile , has become the British Left's M.O. of bleeding dissenters dry. It's revealing to see the Left in the UK embrace corruption and top-down bureaucratic behaviour as their path forward in such a big way.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tommy Robinson
Date: Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 3:06 PM
Subject: On trial at the Old Bailey 4th July 2019 - DISGRACEFUL!!

As I am Counting down the days... Firstly a massive thank you to all who have contributed to help me cover my legal costs for this absolute joke of a case which is nothing short of disgraceful, and which the Attorney General has decided to bring me back for. For those of you that don't know, this will be the 7th time they have taken me to court on these trumped up charges. It is plain and obvious for all to see that this is being done deliberately in order for the costs to be unmanageable. I am currently at over £100,000 in legal fees with another £30,000 which I am required to pay for next week's trial alone! All this because the government say that I may have caused the now CONVICTED child rapist's anxiety!! I have successfully reached almost 50% of the costs for the upcoming trial and am therefore still very much actively trying to raise the remaining 50%. I have even released some new merchandise on www.tr.news especially for the trial date and beyond in order to assist in the contributions to the legal bills and at the same time provide something tangible in return to everyone. I cannot begin to tell you how much I appreciate the level of support you have shown me, and I hope to see you on the 4th July at the Old Bailey if you can make it. If you are in a position to help me with contributing towards the ever-increasing legal costs then you can do so by clicking HERE.  I am fully aware and prepared for the worst, however as you know me well enough by now, I will continue to fight with every bone in my body and to my very last breath to fight the extreme injustices which are being imposed by our own so-called democratic governmental system. Even if they throw me in a jail cell in solitary confinement once again, I will never stop the fight!   ANY SUPPORT IS MASSIVELY APPRECIATED FIGHT THE INJUSTICE - WWW.FREEDOMFORTOMMY.COM PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT THE FIGHT A huge thank you for your support, only you make this fight possible. I hope you can make it to the court on the 4th July! Best, Tommy Robinson CLICK HERE TO JOIN ME ON MY TELEGRAM GROUP TOGETHER WE STAND

Smugglers caught loading 81 migrants onto a tiny boat off the coast of Italy + commentary on lawless European seas

A key indicator of groups going to extreme right or left : The propensity to cheat and exploit emotions through lies rather than through genuinely communicating real problems rises exponentially.

News article: Surveillance footage taken by Frontex shows criminal human traffickers unloading 81 migrants from a fishing vessel onto a smaller boat just off the coast of Italy. 
https://summit.news/2019/06/24/criminal-people-smugglers-caught-filling-up-boat-with-migrants-off-coast-of-italy/

So, make it look like innocent refugees running for their life came perilously all the way across the huge sea in a tiny boat and thus they *need* to be taken in. 

Ask yourself why the most sophisticated navies in the world have deliberately withdrawn from any kind of presence in these seas, why they've given vicious human trafficking gangs that routinely kill and rape some of the people they're ferrying, a free lawless territory to do whatever they like. 

Why are Europe's coasts several times more unguarded than Mumbai's coast was in the 26/11 attacks?

If the concept of a boat of people from another country suddenly landing up on a beach in Mumbai without the Indian armed forces checking them or knowing about them is completely intolerable for you and leads to immediate calls for protecting our coastlines, 

Then why the bloody hell do you think it's perfectly normal for thousands of boats to just land up on a beach in Italy or Spain or Greece with people from other lands just running in?

How is it that your "refugees welcome" bleeding-heart liberal buddies have no concept of taking in refugees with proper reception and processing, vetting by the military at your land and coastal borders so that armed smugglers cannot terrorise them? Do your "noble" buddies WANT all those women to be raped? Do they WANT hysterical gangsters randomly killing one of the refugee group just to keep everyone else in line? Do they think it's a GOOD thing to have these heavily armed militia extort 1000 to 3000 Euros from each refugee, to control all the crossing areas with their guns and kill off anyone who dares to cross without paying them 

Who is it that pulled back all the troops that have been firmly in place since the end of WW2 and left vast stretches of well-inhabited lands and seas absolutely lawless? Do you think Angela Merkel, Macron, May and cronies merely made grandiose announcements of "all refugees are welcome" and did not give any secret instructions to their military? Are you THAT naive?

Are you seriously telling me that there was genuinely absolutely NO military patrol / presence in the entire Mediterranean Sea the entire time that Gaddafi was in power? Where's your extraordinary evidence? What's with all this pretending like we were all born yesterday?

Watch Lauren Southern's Borderless if you genuinely care about all those refugees and aren't in this just making yourself look good on social media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ_fz9EW5Iw

The mass migration didn't "Happen" from genuine reasons. It has been engineered, with key natural obstacles being conveniently removed at every step of the way. The documentary even shows testimony of migrants who were solicited by salesmen to leave their homes and cross over. That's not exactly the "fleeing from certain death" scenario that had been advertised.

For those complaining about European Colonialism

European Colonialism is over! 

Gear up for Chinese colonialism, folks! No confusion, no desire to improve the colonial subjects' well-being or to empower them with more rights - just oppress and extract and eliminate if complaining. 

Keep total, absolute control on all communications and political discourse; use the most advanced technologies to nip any and all resistance in the bud. Keep absolutely no chance whatsoever for anyone to fight for their freedom.

Perfect colonialism : China will show the way.

---

Posted in reply to a comment: "European colonialism caused confusion all over the world ...... So sad..."

on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc4JmEMRHgA 

(video itself isn't so relevant.. this is picking up on other news and trends happening. But sharing for my own note-taking)

My response to "Churchill killed 6 million Indians"

In response to an oft-repeated quote posted by SJWs when they want to demonize the past and identity of Europeans / British, which goes something like:

"Yeah Winston Churchill killed 6 millions Indian civilians go and Google it."

Here we go:

I'm an Indian and I don't hold grudges about what the British Empire (and not just Churchill) did here. That was colonialism. It's over now. They've apologised many times over. We have moved on and chosen to build our civilisation up rather than take another one down (take note, Arabs n Africans). Churchill and his colleagues also saved the world and consequently Indians from the Nazis. The Allies also saved us from the Japanese who were already in our lands, were especially genocidal at the time and didn't even consider us to be human. 

Keep the laws of relativity in mind when evaluating history, instead of being an absolutist.

Drivers jobs getting automated away is technocratic Bullshit

The argument that truckers' jobs are going to be automated away: it's like saying that once autopilot feature is implemented in aeroplanes, airlines will no longer have to hire any pilots and all pilot jobs will be lost. Total BS. Never happened. 

We won't trust a program unless there's a human being there ready to override it. Look at what happened with the two consecutive Boeing 737 Max air crashes that killed hundreds of people : They happened precisely because they allowed the onboard computer to override the human pilots. The sensors got faulty, acted on false diagnosis that the aircraft was stalling. The black box recorders of both crashed planes show eerily similar graphs - the computer plunging the plane down and the pilots desperately wrestling with it to get the plane back up.

There's no way we're going to allow heavy trucks capable of killing hundreds of people (Remember Nice, France attack) to be driven without any human driver. Not in all these techies' lives combined. Trains run on fixed tracks. Trucks can go everywhere, and have a huge mass and momentum that can break through most safety barriers and crush anyone that gets in their way. On top of that, how about letting HACKERS commandeer automated trucks, eh? That attack in Nice? It would have been even worse if there was no human driver at the wheel and a remotely controlled or pre-set program was mowing down all those people. Where's the point in making your physical world so delicate and subject to destruction?? That's not progress, that's a return to anarchy. There is absolutely noting progressive or modern about increasing the sum total of risk in the world. 

At the most, what the automated-vehicles tech will achieve is the same that the autopilot tech has achieved in airplanes : Assisting the pilot, taking care of subroutines. It can help the drivers do their jobs much better, and we're already seeing it happen with the advent of route mapping, GPS directions, etc. The final decision maker - the master - will always have to be the human. Human error is still far less dangerous compared to computer errors and deliberate computer hacks.

Automation has proven itself to be limited and unreliable : it is far more useful for causing destruction (like drones bombing) than for creating or safeguarding. That's because, guess what Sherlock, it takes far less brainpower to be violent and destroy things than it takes to protect, safeguard things.

Reference: This video, the part around 6:20: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtBt2OSL2Mw
Andrew Yang and the "Freedom Dividend" (Universal Basic Income) -Don't Walk, Run! Productions, 2019-03-20

Google employee fired for calling out outrage mobs in Google

https://medium.com/@mikewacker/googles-outrage-mobs-and-witch-hunts-b1d8fa9c74d9
Google’s Outrage Mobs and Witch Hunts

Guess what Google just did to their employee who wrote this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNbtmAR1_4A
Google Fired Conservative For Calling Out Leftist Outrage Mobs -Timcast, 2019-06-06


Is this behaviour far-left or center-left?
This is the most influential company on the planet which can control what people know is true by nudging their search algorithms, demoting one side and promoting the other. They have everybody's emails and site visits, they have the richest individual profiles of all internet users, orders of magnitude greater than anything Cambridge Analytica did.

Do you think it's a good idea to allow this company to have a self-righteous outrage culture taking over it?


Re-posting the full content of the post by Mike Wacker. And in case he sees this, I humbly request an interview with him.

Google has become a company where outrage mobs and witch hunts dominate its culture. These outrage mobs and witch hunts have become an existential threat not only to Google’s culture internally, but to Google’s trust and credibility externally.

Google has long claimed to be a nonpartisan company, yet like many other tech companies, they also maintain many policies against “hate speech”. How do we reconcile these two apparently conflicting goals? While this statement came from a spokesperson for Facebook, it could just as easily apply to Google, Twitter, and many other tech companies.

We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology.

An astute reader will notice that this response does not actually answer the question; it merely shifts it from one point to another. Instead of asking, “Is Google a nonpartisan company?” we instead ask, “Does Google apply a nonpartisan definition of hate speech?”¹

(As for Facebook, we now know that they have a list of “hate agents” that includes Candace Owens.)

So what exactly is the definition of hate speech? Well, let’s just ask the outrage mobs at Google that succeeded. One outrage mob formed when Google sponsored CPAC, and they created an internal petition titled, “Google, Don’t Sponsor Hate.” Another outrage mob formed when Kay Coles James, President of the Heritage Foundation, was appointed to an AI ethics panel, and they created an external petition from a Medium account called “Googlers Against Transphobia and Hate.”

But don’t worry, these outrage mobs are not opposed to all conservatives. They are only opposed to the “hateful” conservatives.

---

These outrage mobs against “hate” have become honeypots for toxic, hostile, and uncivil discourse. While some of their rhetoric is so outlandish that you have no choice but to laugh it, the psychological effects that these outrage mobs have on their targets is nothing to laugh about. Just read this excerpt from Kay Coles James about her own experience with Google’s outrage mob:

In 1961, at age 12, I was one of two-dozen black children who integrated an all-white junior high school in Richmond. White parents jeered me outside the school, and inside, their kids stuck me with pins, shoved me in the halls and pushed me down the stairs. So when the group of Google employees resorted to calling names and making false accusations because they didn’t want a conservative voice advising the company, the hostility was reminiscent of what I felt back then — that same intolerance for someone who was different from them.

I won’t lie, that was a tough part to read. But if you ask the outrage mob, that wasn’t the real problem. The real question was this:

So the real question to this is whether or not we think there’s value in having the Grand Wizard of the KKK on this board.

What sort of alternate universe do you have to live in to think this sort of rhetoric is OK? And what sort of alternative universe do you have to live in where you would turn a blind eye to that rhetoric?

---

As I explained in a previous post, these outrage mobs and witch hunts don’t just target outsiders like CPAC and Kay Coles James. They also target insiders and Google’s own employees. But whether the target is external or internal, the goal of these outrage mobs and witch hunts is the same: to control who belongs at Google.

More importantly, if you can control who belongs at Google, then you can also control what content belongs on Google.

If the people who work at Google — or who feel psychologically safe expressing their opinions at Google — are only the ones who think that CPAC and Kay Coles Jame are hateful, then don’t be surprised if, one day in the future, hate speech is used as a pretext to censor CPAC or Kay Coles James and remove their content from Google’s platforms.

---

In terms of controlling who belongs at Google, these outrage mobs and witch hunts have another tool at their disposal when they target an employee of Google: HR complaints. Few organizations have as much as power to control who belongs at Google as HR does, and if that power is abused, the consequences will be disastrous.

Standing up to an outrage mob or a witch hunt is hard enough when HR doesn’t get involved. It gets even harder when you start worrying about whether HR will discipline you, or even worse, when they actually do discipline you. A few months ago, the Lincoln Network released their 2019 Viewpoint Inclusion Survey Report, and one of the pull quotes from that survey directly captures this experience:

CONSERVATIVE — Employees will interpret your words in the most offensive way possible, then report you to HR based on that interpretation. It’s one big offendedness sweepstakes. When people get in trouble, it’s often based not on what they said, but on how others interpreted their words, regardless of how unreasonable that interpretation is. And there is some evidence HR does have a political agenda. I’ve even seen someone get reported to HR for sharing a National Review article.

One Google employee, who gave me permission to share his story, was once hauled into a meeting with management and HR over some of his writings on company message boards. He was not directly punished in that meeting, but the meeting did carry a strong implied threat of future punishment. Here was one of the issues that was mentioned to him in writing after that meeting:

One Googler raised a concern that you that you appeared to be promoting and defending Jordan Peterson’s comments about transgender pronouns, and this made them feel unsafe at work.

Allegedly, Google is a company that supports a freedom of expression, but Google is also a company where you can get in trouble with HR for defending Jordan Peterson’s stance that the government cannot compel speech, including compelling the usage of preferred pronouns.

---

I have heard other stories like this one, but for obvious reasons, most people don’t want to share these stories. Thus, the time has finally come for me to step forward and share my own story, especially on behalf of those who have stories of their own but do not yet feel ready to share them.

At Google, I have been the owner and the creator of the republicans@ mailing list. When I first created that mailing list back in October 2016, my humble ambition was to create a community for Republicans at Google and help make the company a little more friendlier for Republicans. It would suffice to say that my actual experience has thrust me into a much larger role than I could ever have imagined (a topic which I could spend an entire post on).

My role as the republicans@ owner has also made me a prime target for the outrage mobs and witch hunts. On March 6, 2019, I was pulled into a meeting of my own with my management and HR. During that meeting, I received a final written warning, and I received a verbal offer of 8 weeks of severance pay if I left the company. That verbal offer of severance was an implied threat of termination. While they never said it explicitly, it was clear that if I didn’t take that offer, they would invent some pretext to fire me shortly thereafter.

(Due to an unexpected series of events, this process was put on hold, but that would only delay the inevitable.)

---

So how do you deal with these outrage mobs and witch hunts?

I seem to be quite deft at navigating that sort of environment, and I seem to know more than most about these sorts of situation. In my senior year of college at Cornell University, I even played a leading role in successfully pushing back against an outrage mob that came dangerously close to kicking a Christian fellowship group off campus.² Yet even with all that expertise and experience, I must admit there are so many answers that I still don’t have.

Trivial or fabricated charges are a dime a dozen. You can definitively refute one charge,³ and you can modify your behavior to avoid another charge, but then a new trivial and fabricated charge will arise to take the place of the old one. On top of that, it is very easy to write these charges in a way where they will look credible to a neutral outsider who has no additional context, even though they would quickly crumble once you were provided the full context.

Thus, I’m not going to rebut every single charge that has been presented against me, but I will highlight a couple of allegations in depth, in order to expose this kangaroo court for the true monster that it is. The intent is not just to rebut individual charges, though I will do that as well. The intent is to demonstrate how the process for producing such charges is so fundamentally flawed and untrustworthy that it compromises the entire process.

---

So, let’s look at the first allegation that I will unveil:

2/9/2019, You received feedback on industry-info@ that your comments were “rude, disrespectful, and intellectually dishonest”

Now first of all, let me state with the utmost confidence that I believe Google HR has consistently enforced their standards against rude, disrespectful, and intellectually dishonest comments against everyone who has taken part in these various outrage mobs.

(In case you couldn’t tell, that was sarcasm.)

What’s really disturbing here is that HR (and my management) has completely abandoned any pretense of enforcing any sort of objective and impartial standard. What matters is not whether I was objectively disrespectful or not; what matters is that someone accused me of being disrespectful by their own subjective standards. Given the crazy subjective standards that some of these activists have, that’s a pretty damn scary reality.

So, you may ask, which activist did this accusation come from? Was it one of the activists who thought that CPAC was hateful? Was it one of the activists who thought that Kay Coles James was hateful? That definitely would be relevant context here, context that was conveniently omitted here.

In this particular case, that accusation came from the person who called Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) a terrorist: Blake Lemoine.⁴ On top of that, in the exact same thread where he called me “rude, disrespectful, and intellectually dishonest,” he also doubled down on his comments about Sen. Blackburn.

If someone calls a sitting Republican legislator a terrorist, it probably is not a good idea to treat that person as a credible accuser in disciplinary action against the owner of the republicans@ mailing list.

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The other allegation I will (partially) unveil has a similar format:

1/22/2019: You wrote in the activists-us@ group: “The definition of ‘Google’s values’ that matters is the one used by Google’s activists, who could only be described as ‘nonpartisan’ in the same sense that the Women’s March could be described as inclusive towards pro-life Jewish women.“ Other members of the group responded that your statement was percieved [sic] as hateful/incendiary/inflammatory. [redacted]

Now normally, I leave the activists-us@ group alone, but in this circumstance, a member of Google’s US public policy team responded to their hate-thread about CPAC, confirming that Google would not be a sponsor of CPAC this year. In my tenure as the republicans@ owner, few things have alienated conservatives at the company as much as the CPAC debate, so in this instance, I decided to go to bat for my fellow Republicans. Thus, I decided to write a response to that member of the US public policy team, even if it meant wading into the activists-us@ group. Here was the full email I wrote:

This decision is a travesty. Few things have alienated conservatives at Google as much as the CPAC debate, and the US public policy team’s decision here will only further that alienation. It’s clear that the demands of the dominant activist tribe matter more than principled pluralism at this company.

With all this talk of respect at Google, I can’t help but come back to the wise words of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty. In a paragraph on the topic of intemperate discussion, Mill writes, “The worst offence of this kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to stigmatize those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men.” When the anti­-CPAC petition promoted by activists­-us@ is literally titled, “Google, Don’t Sponsor Hate,” it’s clear that this dark art of polemics is well and alive at Google. The clear undertone of this debate has been that conservatives are both hateful and evil. I’ve had this running joke that Google is full of social justice activists who are dedicated to ridding the world of the evils of Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and John Kasich. That joke takes on a new life of its own when the anti­-CPAC petition lumps Marion Maréchal­-Le Pen and the NRA into the same overly broad, hopelessly vague category of “hate”.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has insisted time and time again that Google is a nonpartisan company, but more and more those words seem like empty words: all talk, no action. Both internally and externally, a narrative has begun to emerge that liberal political activists are calling the shots at Google. It’s really hard to refute that narrative when the US public policy team engages with activists­-us@ “in the spirit of communication and good faith” to inform them that Google has caved to their demands, and that Google will not be sponsoring CPAC this year. Somewhere, a document exists that explicitly defines Google’s values, and perhaps those values could be described as non­partisan, but that definition does not seem to be the one that matters. The definition of “Google’s values” that matters is the one used by Google’s activists, who could only be described as “nonpartisan” in the same sense that the Women’s March could be described as inclusive towards pro-­life Jewish women. Or, to quote a rather prescient headline from David French of The National Review, “In Outrage Campaigns, It’s the Internal Mob that Matters.”

Given all the hateful, incendiary, and inflammatory rhetoric that was deployed by the outrage mob against CPAC, it is beyond belief that this email was the one that got punished. For example, the person who accused me of being incendiary was also the same person who compared black conservatives who spoke at CPAC to Jews who spoke at a Holocaust denial conference.

But on the bright side, at least we now know the definition of “hate speech” that Google HR uses: anything that Google’s activists perceive as hateful. And to explain just how insane that standard is, at one point, I asked one of these activists if I had correctly summarized their views: “So to be clear, Google can’t fund groups that espouse pro-­life views, and if Google does, then ‘How do we expect women to work here?’” Their response: “Correct.” (There was one non-activist who pushed back against that claim, but none of the activists pushed back against it or even seemed to be remotely bothered by it.)

Now that doesn’t mean you can’t espouse pro-life views at Google. You are still free to espouse pro-life views so long as activists don’t perceive those views to be hateful, incendiary, or inflammatory. Just remember that some of these activists also think that women can’t be expected to work at Google if it donates to groups that espouse pro-life views.

(As for the second part I redacted, debunking that part would require additional context and would require me to publish many more emails as relevant context. While publishing those emails would certainly be advantageous to my position, here I have opted to redact that second part instead of debunking it. I think I’ve already made my point by now.)

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As I said before, I’m not going to cover every trivial or fabricated allegation made against me, but it should be pretty clear by now that this final written warning is a political witch hunt.

Surely, my management and HR will try to claim that problems with how I conduct myself in the course of the work as a software engineer also factored into this final written warning, but if that was the real problem, then why would they even have brought my political viewpoints into this matter in the first place? That’s what their real problem with me is here.

The manager who took part in this final written warning also once told me that my “Googleyness” was more important for my career than the actual work I did. Now, I can finally confirm what he meant by that…

I have long suspected that political bias has impaired their judgment of my work — that I have been judged for who I am, not for what I do — but up until this point, there has been a lot of smoke, but no smoking gun. Now, I have that smoking gun, though to be honest, I am a little surprised that they delivered it to me in writing and on a silver platter.

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Now that we have several examples of what Google HR considers to be policy violations, let me also provide an example of what is not considered to be a policy violation.

After the outrage mob against Kay Coles James had succeeded, a Google employee posted the op-ed that Kay Coles James wrote for the Washington Post on Google’s industryinfo@ mailing list. You can imagine what the reaction was like from most of the employees who participated in that thread.

I myself didn’t want to get drawn into an extensive debate on that topic, but I did want to state my views and express support for Kay Coles James. Thus, I decided to write this simple post:

To be clear, had the council still existed with Kay Coles James on it, James should have felt welcome during council meetings to express the views she expressed in her tweets, including her views about the Equality Act.

https://twitter.com/KayColesJames/status/1108768455141007360

https://www.heritage.org/gender/heritage-explains/the-equality-act

https://twitter.com/KayColesJames/status/1108365238779498497

https://twitter.com/KayColesJames/status/1100488434500685824

As usual, Blake Lemoine replied in a thoughtful and respectful manner:

Yes. Everyone is clearly aware of your opinion that Google should be open to discussing whether trans women are actually women. Everyone is aware that you think that the viewpoint that trans women are actually men invading womens’ spaces is one which should be open for discussion.

Everyone is aware of your tolerance for bigotry.

Oh, and yeah. My comment was essentially a restatement of one of James’ tweets and the document to which it linked. She believes and clearly stated that she believes trans women are men invading womens’ spaces. She said many other things too. Some of which were reasonable. But when you say that you believe that ideas she expressed in those tweets should be welcome at Google then you are literally saying that womanhood of your trans female coworkers is a topic which should be a topic for debate on Google’s ethics council.

At this point, another Google employee made a heartfelt plea that we should be more respectful towards religious minorities at Google. Of course, Blake Lemoine only doubled down after that:

Bigotry is not a religion. This is despite the fact that bigots have regularly tried to wrap their bigotry in holy robes.

As for whether everyone is entitled to their own “understanding” of who is a man, who is a woman and who is a person, sure. Understand things whatever way you want. I have no problems with what people believe in their heart of hearts. That’s not what this conversation is about though. This conversation is explicitly about which ideas are welcome in a Google ethics committee for the purpose of shaping company policy.

If someone wants to influence Google’s policy with their ideas that their trans co-workers are really men invading womens’ spaces then they aren’t welcome here. If anyone personally believes that then that’s their perogative. I’m sure that supporters of a white ethnostate can be quite effective at building server infrastructure. I don’t think their beliefs should impact their employment here one way or another. It’s when they start trying to effect change within the company on the basis of those beliefs that I think they should be shown the door.

If you think black people aren’t people you can either keep it to yourself or GTFO.

If you think that trans women aren’t women then you can either keep it to yourself or GTFO.

Google’s corporate policies are crystal clear on that.

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At this point, I was extremely tempted to report Blake for being “rude, disrespectful, and intellectually dishonest,” but I didn’t do that.

Nowadays, I normally don’t like to report anything to HR.⁵ I certainly don’t want to be part of the problem when it comes to frivolous HR complaints. In this instance, though, Blake crossed another line that is objective, clear, and viewpoint-neutral: he started making employment threats, not just against me, but against entire classes of Google employees. I did report him for that.

And of course, HR determined that Blake had not violated any of Google’s policies. For obvious reasons, I pushed back against that, but even an HR manager would not budge. I was honestly shocked at how HR tried to rationalize his clearly unacceptable behavior.

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If left unchecked, these outrage mobs will hunt down any conservative, any Christian, and any independent free thinker at Google who does not bow down to their agenda. Anyone who stands up to them will be hounded until they either shut the fuck up or they “get the fuck out”. Furthermore, Google HR has clearly shown that they function as an accessory to these witch hunts.

As I said before, once you control who belongs at Google, you can control what content belongs on Google.

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[1] Even the part about violence poses potential problems. While most everyone would agree that actual violence is bad, the definition of violence itself has been subject to concept creep. More and more, we’ve heard claims that speech is violence, and the outrage mob against Kay Coles James was no exception to that trend. Thus, it’s important that your definition of violence doesn’t endorse this notion that speech is violence.

[2] But back then, in theory I was nothing more than the conservative columnist for The Cornell Daily Sun, though in practice my role was much more than that. Today, in theory I am nothing more than the owner of a social mailing list [republicans@] at Google, though in practice my role is much more than that. It’s an eerie parallel that I have definitely noticed.

[3] On one occasion, through some clever cross-examination, I was able to catch my management in a lie. Here, HR did not respond by directly acknowledging that lie. Instead, they responded by saying they would capture my feedback and questions in an addendum. This tactic appears to be a fairly common one. In other words, they won’t act on a lie, but they will allow you to write an addendum to create the perception that they acted on a lie.

[4] At the time she was called a terrorist, Marsha Blackburn was serving in the House of Representatives. She would later be elected to the Senate.

[5] Believe it or not, when I first arrived at Google, I tended to blindly trust Google HR in a way that was extremely naive and for which I rightly deserved to be criticized. It suffices to say that I’ve since abandoned that naivety.